Q: What happened while you were on your year-end hiatus from “live blogging”?
A: A lot. Let’s explore some of it now.
Pandemic Numbers +
I know President Trump said that immediately after Election Day we would stop talking about the pandemic; like most of what he says that was malarkey. It’s closing in on his Eviction Day and the conversation has only intensified. For context this article is being written on the morning of January 3, 2021.
On Saturday December 12th (about the last time I wrote a “live” article) America was at 16 million infections. On Friday January 1, 2021 we exceeded 20 million.
On Monday December 14th we hit 300,000 fatalities. As of this writing we have exceeded 350,000. To put that in context there were 405,000 American fatalities in World War II. The reality is that we may exceed that number by Inauguration Day; if not we will be very close.
The Trump administration promised 20 million vaccinations by the end of 2020. By the time you read this we will have just passed 4 million inoculations or will be extremely close to that number. Would you expect a passing grade on a test that you handed in several days late and with only about 20% of the questions answered correctly?
I’ll sum this section up by paraphrasing on of my “lines”. Republicans are hazardous to your health.
Josh Hawley For President +
Behavior scientists generally agree that there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. Trump appears to be stuck in denial with occasional journeys into anger, bargaining (that may be a stretch) and depression. At no point has he reached acceptance nor does it appear that will be his destination – reality does not exist in the Donald Dome. He appears to have some company on his trip and more than a few that are coming along motivated by perceived self-interest.
Led by Mo Brooks of Alabama – just think about that for a moment – several House Republicans are threatening to contest the election results when Congress certifies the Electoral College’s vote. That can go nowhere unless they are joined, in writing, by at least one member of the Senate. On Wednesday December 30th Missouri Republican Josh Hawley became that Senator, in effect, announcing his candidacy for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. As of this writing he has been joined by 11 others including Ted Cruz of Texas. For some the motivation is visibility and fundraising; for Hawley and Cruz it is an attempt to grab Trump voters for the 2024 GOP primaries in the full knowledge that Trump himself will either be in jail, have fled the country or just be so tied up in litigation that he will not be a candidate.
Whatever happened to their oath to the Constitution and the concept of constituent (in most cases voter) service?
The War Of The DC Dons
As the four year turf sharing “marriage” between Don Trump and Don McConnell breaks up we get to watch the soap opera divorce. It is an interesting show with “friends’ taking sides. The Senate overwhelmingly overrode Trump’s veto of the Defense Authorization bill. That is the first Trump veto ever overridden. Mitch McConnell gave that vote his blessing in a break from Trump.
The 12 GOP Senators carrying Trump’s “I won the election water” despite McConnell’s (very politically astute) plea to the contrary is an extremely rare blow to McConnell’s control of his caucus. I predict all twelve will rue that decision.
Metaphorically presented here is the political reality in Washington: Trump is like a hemorrhoid and the removal surgery has already been scheduled; Mitch is in the Senate for at least another six years and will be the GOP leader for the foreseeable future. Barring an unlikely twin Democratic win in Georgia tomorrow he will be the Senate Majority Leader, and a very skilled one at that, for some time to come. Trump is annoying but increasingly irrelevant. (How big of a factor in Republican politics is Sarah Palin?)
The Return
What concerns me the most are the political moves I just can’t figure out. One of them happened on New Year’s Eve when Trump returned to Washington from Mar-a-Lago. Trump stiffed a bunch of people who shelled out a lot of money to ring in the New Year with him at his club. Trump stiffing people is simply standard operating procedure for him but he cares much more about Mar-a-Lago that he does America. What was in it for him (or did he think was in it for him) to fly back to DC?
Since he is mainly stuck in denial let’s hope it was just to (in his mind) close the deal on some plot to stay in office by political maneuver. My biggest fear is that Trump is trying to incite civil unrest as an excuse to declare martial law and somehow stay in power in the process. Letting go of the skimming operation at the core of the organized criminal enterprise known as the Trump administration will be difficult for him to do. Trump is little more than a thief and con man at heart.
The “Stand back and stand by” to the Proud Bays still rings in my ears. Small “d” democracy in America may be an airplane on the approach in clear weather but it has yet to land.
Back And Bye
The rest was good and it is equally good to be back. Like all “catch up” articles this one was very, very incomplete but that is enough for today.
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